Some cars are better than others, but no car is perfect — and our beloved shitboxes are often far from it. Earlier this week, we asked just how bad things are with your daily drivers and learned a few important things. Plenty of you actually have reliable, practical transportation in addition to your unending projects, and it seems like nearly every one of those daily drivers is a Mazda or Nissan. Oh, and, we learned the worst things about your cars. Let’s dive in.
Fuel economy and running costs. Parts are expensive and fuel economy is awful. I don’t need to replace broken parts often, just worn out ones. 351,000 miles.
97 Land Cruiser
This is a very interesting one, because the Land Cruiser is supposed to be nigh indestructible. I have it on good authority that up to five cylinders can be made entirely out of JB Weld before anything actually starts to go awry in an 80-series. Do you mean to tell me that the IH8Mud forums lied?
My 2024 Mazda CX-90's adaptive cruise control is just too damn aggressive no matter what you do with the settings. It’s most notable when you’re passing and there’s a left hand bend and there’s a semi in the right hand lane. At some point the forward facing sensors are going to pick up that semi as ‘in front of you’ and brake. Double points if it’s an uphill so the truck is going super slow, so it brakes HARD. There’s even a spot on my way to work the road goes up hill, there’s a left hand bend, there’s a guardrail, and the Adaptative Cruise Control briefly interprets either the roadway itself or the guard rail (not sure which) as ‘in front’ and starts to brake. It fixes itself fairly quickly but it’s still a bit of a PITA.
Worst part about it? You can disable Adaptive Cruise Control, but it’s 3 menus deep. Oh! And you have to disable it every damn time you drive. There’s even 2 empty button spots on the steering wheel beside the rest of the cruise control buttons, so it’s not like they couldn’t have added an on/off right there.
Whenever I’m in a car with adaptive cruise, I’m always keeping a steady eye on exactly what it’s doing. Sometimes you just have to be proactive with software like that, hand-hold it through tough things like “corners” or “being near other vehicles.”
2021 Mazda 6. Only complaint is that it isn’t a manual.
No complaints about the adaptive cruise that is any different from any other cars I have driven with it (can be switched to regular cruise control by holding down the cruise control button for a few seconds). No complaints about BSM that is any different from any other cars I have driven. I am fine with the infotainment...I could take a slightly quicker connection to Sirius/XM, but that is all. Rain-sensing wipers sometimes flip out in some rain conditions, but not often and easily remedied by turning off and back on.
One slight other quibble. In sweeping turns, as the car starts to roll it does something a little weird. There is a sudden, but not necessarily unwelcome, addition of some oversteer (really just less understeer). It’s not the less understeer that I don’t like, it’s the abruptness/unpredictability. Feels like this is in the stability control, though I guess I can’t rule out suspension geometry. I think it would be more progressive/predictable if this was dialed into the suspension, plus most multilinks reduce oversteer as a car rolls, so probably a stability control effect.
As much as I’d love to have three pedals available in every single vehicle (I’m looking at you, Chrysler Pacifica), the market just won’t let it happen. Too many people are too happy with their more convenient automatic gearboxes, and manufacturers don’t like to spend lots of money on small market niches like us.
2010 Porsche 911 - There is a single lock and unlock button on the FOB and no audible indicator when you lock the doors. The only time it will make a sound is if you don’t have a door or trunk closed all the way it will honk to tell you, otherwise it is silent, so that coupled with the single lock/unlock button on the remote means you never know if your car is locked or unlocked without standing right next to it so you can hear the locks or try to open the door handle.
I don’t know how many times I have walked away not knowing if I remembered to lock the car and having to run all the way back to pull on the door handle. If there was a dedicated lock button I could just smash 7-8 times until I see lights flash, even that would be so much better.
Having a single button to toggle lock/unlock is the kind of efficiency that makes perfect sense until you think about it for 30 seconds. In theory, you’ve shaved a few cents off the price of your keys; in practice, every 997 ends up Schrodinger’s Locked when the owner walks away.
2009 Mazda 5.
i am actually surprised how much i like this car, considering i bought it as a transportation appliance solely on the basis that i can get my wheelchair in and out of the driver side rear sliding door without assistance.
What do i not like about the car? That it was obviously built to a price for the American market, even though my car is the top-of-the-line Grand Touring model.
For example:
Vanity mirror on the driver’s side visor only
Storage pocket only behind the driver’s seat
Blanks where the switches for the power sliding doors are on JDM models
Several additional blanks for other JDM-only features (I could investigate what these blanks are for, but i don’t care enough to spend the time Googling it)
Cheapest/thinnest leather seating surfaces I have ever seen on a car
Two settings for instrument panel lights - High and Low, nothing in between
Other than that and the ‘meh’ fuel economy, it’s a great car that suits me well.
If you’re going to put a vanity mirror anywhere, it should be on the passenger side, right? The driver has a much easier time scooting over to see themselves in the rear- or side-view mirrors, while the passenger only has the vanity mirror to work from.
Because I’m cheap and got the base model, my new CX-5 has push button start but not push button entry. It’s not the issue to end all issues, but it’s a little annoying to have to dig the key out just to not need it once I’m actually in the car (although I’m starting to feel the buttons enough I don’t have to look). On the other hand, with all the theft problems up here (although thankfully Mazdas don’t seem particularly at risk), that’s maybe one less vulnerability to worry about.
I’ve had plenty of cars that had to be unlocked by the key fob, and most have a bump or dent on one of the lock buttons — eventually, you learn to lock and unlock the car by feel in your pocket. Unless you’re the 911 owner above, then I guess you’re out of luck.
2019 Mazda Miata - The proximity key and it’s auto-lock mechanism, hands down. It’s intended to lock the car automatically when the fob gets far enough away after shutting it off, i.e. when you go inside. It doesn’t always work, and it’s a little inconsistent. If the trunk is open, it doesn’t work. Sometimes if you stand near the car for too long before walking away, it doesn’t work.
And then someone tests your door and steals your sunglasses and whatever isn’t tied down/locked up. At least the glovebox locks.
What is this? Leaving stuff unattended in your car? Have you no shame, no sense of decency or cleanliness? The only item I ever left out in my FR-S interior was a USB cable, which was plugged into the dash — until I tore the dash apart to run the wiring inside. I’m normal. You’re the weird one.
Nissan windows are the worst!
My commuter car is a Nissan Rogue, and the windows drive me nuts. In a normal car, windows go up and down, and the rubber window gasket “cleans” any moisture off the window. Everything is solid and you don’t give it a second thought.
In the Nissan, the gasket barely touches the window. What’s more, when the window retracts into the door, the door plastic gets pushed out, actually flexing! Window goes up, door plastic moves again. And don’t bother opening that window even a bit on the highway - because it’s not tightly held by the door, like in every other friggin company’s mechanism, the window rattles since it’s such a loose setup.
Despite it being a Nissan, it does the job of getting me to work and back satisfactorily, but that window mechanism is a purely stupid setup. And no, it’s not a fault with just my car. I checked out other Nissans and they do the same thing. I even took it back to the dealership several times for fixes until they eventually showed me this loose setup is be design. Moronic design.
My background is in marketing, where you try to design products that appeal to a specific target demographic by meeting their needs and desires. I’m not sure who needs or desires windows that fit badly, but perhaps that’s something they address in the graduate level courses.
Toyota seatbealts. Both the 1988 Celica I owned in HS and the 1996 Tacoma I bought after and still own have the same issue: When they got older the seat belts don’t retract very easily.
Just the other night, I was in a Camry where the seat belts never retracted under their own power. Granted, they were weighed down by TRD badges and pads, but they should still have been able to roll back up unassisted.
2016 Jaguar XF: it... just doesn’t look like a Jag. the interior is great, the engine really means business, but... it kind of looks like a Continental.
Technically, if it is a Jaguar, then whatever, it looks like just looks like a Jaguar. Because it is one. So no matter how it looks, it still looks like the thing it is because it is an example of the thing it is. You get it.
Honda CR-Z - Other cars have this problem too, like the old Audi A3 and to a lesser extend A4: the cupholders are under the protruding dashboard, so you are both limited by how tall of a drink fits AND this requires you to perform a particular maneuver to lift them up, then out towards you every time you want to drink. There needs to be at least one cupholder depth of space above the drink in order to lift it out straight up, otherwise you have to tilt it and reallly hope that lid is on tight.
Not mine, just the best-lit pic I could find:
Last gen A3:
The problem here is that you’re talking about Japanese and European cars. They simply haven’t entered God’s grace by embracing the One True Drink, the 64-ounce soda from 7-11.
Looking past annoyances like chasing down sunroof leaks and how absurdly difficult it is to access and replace the cabin air filter, I nominate the light grey fabric seat inserts in my Volvo C30. Water stains them. Anything from rain water to pure, filtered bottled water will leave a small discoloration. I’ve yet to find a protectant spray that can prevent this. I’m tired of steam cleaning and am finally considering just having them recovered in a different material and color.
(Not my car, but same seats)
You can mitigate all the interior staining issues with a darker interior, sure, but then it’ll be about 1,000 degrees every time you sit down in the summer. I’m also not going to overlook the incredibly small range of substances between “rain water” (a surprisingly pure water source) and “pure, filtered bottled water” (a surprisingly impure water source). Not even sweat? Everyone sweats!
Nissan Xterra - Fuel economy.
Fiat 124 Abarth Spider - Seatbelt tensioners and having to explain to people what it is... I literally once had a guy get angry at me when I tried to explain that it wasn’t a “kit car.”
Fiat 500 - Honestly, the worst thing is just finding anyone willing to work on the damn thing!
It’s not a kit car, it’s one of the better-looking vehicles you could purchase for a reasonable budget in recent memory. It does need an extra 300 rpms before redline, though.
Focus ST turning circle. 18.7'. For comparison: Malibu - 18.5'
Yeah, but, c’mon. When do you ever need to turn tighter than that in a hot hatchback, one of the most common genres of car to see at any autocross event ever?